If the three parties that tell a true crime story – the police, the community and the media – are failing to find answers for what happened to Sarah Zuber, can robust journalism find out what really happened to Sarah Zuber? The Hush team takes a look at the top suspect to find out how much is fact and how much is simple speculation. OPB also uncovers a dizzying array of mistakes from the Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office that may have undermined the investigation from nearly the first day.

Listen to all episodes of the “Hush” podcast here.

Leah Sottile: The morning of March 13, 2019 was misty and cold in Rainier, Oregon. From midnight until sunrise, the temperature hovered around 40 degrees.

Sometime between 3:30 and 4:00 a.m., a construction worker drove his pickup down the winding rural road where the Zubers live. He later told police he saw nothing on the side of the road.

Around 5:30 a.m., Sarah Zuber’s father, Randy, pulled out of the driveway. He took a right out on the road, passing the spot where his daughter’s body would be found hours later. He saw nothing.

Cars kept coming.

At 6:30 a.m., a woman drove down the road to work. She saw nothing.

At 7:00 a.m., a man walked his dog by the Zuber’s house. He paused and watched a big herd of elk pass by. But, again, like all the others, he did not see Sarah Zuber lying on the side of the road.

Presumably, people drove and walked by that spot where Sarah lay all morning. I’ve seen the photos of where she was found. She wasn’t down in a ditch, or tucked into underbrush. She was face up, just off the road’s shoulder. It seems like someone should know something about what happened to Sarah. Should have seen something.

But each theory pursued by the police and the community, and to some extent the media, has failed to produce a solid answer for how she died. The police can’t explain how Sarah ended up on the side of the road. The community, helmed by Jennifer Massey, has other theories. She thinks Sarah was hit by a car. The media, which is in such a state of disarray in Columbia County, has struggled to bring forward new information at all.

And honestly, as journalists, we were having a hard time finding any substantial facts, too. One day, Ryan and I stared at a whiteboard in the OPB office where we went around and around about where to take our reporting next.

Ryan Haas: I think we have to talk to the Zubers about that: A lot of people have promised you answers, and I think…

Sottile: Yeah, and we may say…

Haas: This is one part where we’ve tried to be pretty explicit. Like, I don’t know if I can promise you answers. I’m not…

Sottile: I think that that could be what we say. Like, for a year we gave this a pretty good shake, and we are at the same spot as everybody else, so maybe there’s no answer. We’re not saying we’re the best. There could be other people that could find it, but perhaps there is no answer.

Haas: No, there’s an answer. I mean, something happened to her. There’s a fucking answer. There is an answer.

Sottile: We figured if we were going to stand in for the media in this county, we had to run down all of the police and community theories to their furthest possible point.

When we did, we uncovered things that have never been revealed about this case, and our understanding of what happened to Sarah would change completely.

From Oregon Public Broadcasting, this is Hush. I’m Leah Sottile. This is Episode Six: Persons unknown.

Before we go any further, I think it’s a good time to review the few known facts of Sarah’s last day.

On the night of March 12, 2019. Sarah clocked out of work at 9:31 p.m.. Kati Zuber texted her older sister and asked her to bring her a diet cream soda.

Kati Zuber: They used to sell them in the bottle at Chevron, but she brought me home a fountain drink with ice in it, in one of those paper Coke cups. And that’s one thing I’m like, where did she go to get that? Because there’s nowhere in town that has a soda machine that has diet cream soda.

Sottile: Sarah went somewhere to buy that soda, and she got home about an hour later, around 10:30 p.m.

Then, Sarah and Kati got into an argument.

K. Zuber: We had a little disagreement and then she went into her room to get her earbuds or whatever, and then I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to take a shower.’

Sottile: Could you have seen it in her to be upset about whatever happened and go in a room and slam some drinks and go outside? Or do you think there was even time for that to have happened?

K. Zuber: Yeah, I don’t think that she would’ve done that. I think that she would’ve gone in her room and put her earbuds in and listened to music and then gone out. I really don’t think that she would’ve gone in her room and chugged a bunch of vodka and then gone outside. I never knew her to deal with anger that way.

Sottile: Kati insisted Sarah wasn’t drunk when she left for a walk around 10:50 p.m.

About seven minutes later, Sarah sent two garbled messages to her boyfriend, Vishal, and to a Facebook group chat. Both of those messages were misspelled, so we can’t say for sure what they meant.

A half hour later, at 11:32 p.m., Sarah’s phone died. Investigators found it wet and in her pocket the next day. The cops don’t know Sarah’s exact time of death, but the time of her phone dying is one theory, and it’s one of the last data points they have.

Then, 12.5 hours later, at noon on March 13, Kati found her sister dead.

OK, so that’s what we know. Six months into our reporting, we had spent hundreds of hours reading documents and making phone calls. And one person kept coming up in police reports, a person who came up when we first talked to Jennifer Massey.

It’s probably pretty clear at this point, but there’s not a lot that the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office and Jennifer agree on. She believes the sheriff’s office did a lackluster job investigating Sarah’s death. But they’ve both entertained the idea that one guy could be responsible for a hit-and-run. One day, she brought it up when we were talking to her in downtown St. Helens.

Jennifer Massey: And you guys went back and saw the audio, or heard the audio and the video. I think something’s gonna come of that for sure.

Sottile: What audio and what video?

Massey: For the car. There’s Carnahan. How are you?

Sottile: The car? Do you know what she’s talking about?

Massey: The surveillance video of the car.

Sottile: She was referring to the video taken by a security camera on a property down the road from the Zubers that showed headlights going past.

Sottile: Oh yeah, they’re like watching…

Massey: Yeah, the 1.4 miles away.

Sottile: I see. OK. You think something’s going to come of that?

Massey: Absolutely.

Sottile: What do you think is going to come of it?

Massey: I think he’s the person. I think that, yeah. Yeah. Don’t say that out loud, but yeah…

Ryan: OK. I won’t jinx it.

Sottile: OK. I mean, you’ll tell us when something, or if something happens.

Massey: Absolutely. Something’s happening, I feel like.

Sottile: OK. Alright. Keep us posted.

Massey: This is going to be an insane series here. This is a wild one.

Sottile: Back when we first sat down with Jennifer in her office, she shared her hit-and-run theory, which she thought was supported by the security camera footage from down the road.

We took a closer look at that tape in Episode Three, and realized what Jennifer and her group of citizen sleuths thought was video of a car speeding down the road was actually just the footage on fast-forward.

But there’s actually more to Jennifer’s theory.

Massey: She left at 10:50. She used to walk about a half a mile. So our hypothesis – which is really good circumstantial evidence – is that she left her house around 10:50. The way that she was facing probably was on her way back, and we think she got hit at 11:27. We think the car was caught on camera, which mathematically works at 11:29 because it’s 1.4 miles away and it’s windy. And her phone, it was a Samsung TracFone that I think she got at Walmart that, when we called them, had no water repellent. We also found audio footage.

Sottile: The Justice for Sarah Zuber group found a tip in the police files about a guy in Rainier we’ll call Nick. We aren’t comfortable using his real name because he hasn’t been charged with a crime.

Nick has a violent record. And he also has a track record of drunk driving and hit-and-runs.

In the police files, there was a phone call to the police tip line in the days after Sarah died that caught Jennifer’s attention.

Tipster: My grandson does work crew. And he says “Grandma,” he says, “I have to tell you something.” He says. And he told me what happened at work crew. And I said, “Well, you know, it really should be reported.” He didn’t want to get in any trouble so I said, “I will report it myself.”

Sottile: This woman’s tip was about her grandson overhearing a phone call about another phone call where a woman supposedly said she was in the car with Nick the night Sarah died. Nick was drunk driving down her road. The woman thought Nick hit something, but they didn’t go back to look.

It’s a game of telephone: a call about a call about a call. Fourth-hand information. But Jennifer thinks there might be a grain of truth there.

Massey: Yeah, nobody ever interviewed any of these people. A forensic report from the Oregon Crime Lab came back that Sarah had green flakes all over her body or on her body, and they said it wasn’t standard paint but if a suspect vehicle was found, then it should be considered.

Sottile: Jennifer admitted this could all be circumstantial. But the more we looked into Nick, the more it seemed like he was a really dangerous driver. Ryan reached a guy named Don Gartin, who Nick crashed into about 10 months before Sarah died. It happened on one of the other windy, wooded roads around Rainier.

Haas: Could you just tell me what you remember about that? I saw it was kind of like a hit-and-run or something, right?

Don Gartin: Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you what happened. I was coming, I was on my way home from work and I’m not sure, I think it was 4:30, 5:00, somewhere around there, p.m., and I just turned onto Lost Creek Road. Well, on the second corner, I just happened to look up and I see this guy coming down the road shittin’ an’ a gettin’ on the wrong side of the road. I pulled over to the side of the road as far as I could, and anyway, it wasn’t far enough and he hit me head on. So his car ripped my front tire off, tore the mirrors off, broke the window on the driver’s side, and spun around in the road, I imagine four or five times.

Sottile: Don said he was in shock. But before he knew it, the guy who hit him – Nick – was running away.

Gartin: I see this guy get out of the car and open up the trunk, grab a bag, a backpack thing, and took off running up towards me. Well, when he went by, I just looked out the broken window and, “Hey, where are you going?”

Sottile: Don’s OK by the way.

Nick’s name also came up when we got another tip. Ryan had called the mail carrier who worked out by the Zubers’ house to see if she had seen anything that day. She said no, but that we should talk to her son.

Haas: This is Ryan from OPB.

Jay: Hi, Ryan. How are you doing?

Haas: Good. How are you doing?

Jay: Oh, I got my hands full with two little ones right now.

Sottile: Her son said he was worried about his safety, so he wanted us to call him “Jay.” Jay grew up in the same rural part of Columbia County as Sarah.

Jay: Sarah was a friend of mine from church and bible camp and all that when we were younger. So it kind of shook me when I heard that she was found dead. So I wanted to get down to the bottom of it.

Sottile: Jay ran in very different circles from Sarah. When he talked to Ryan, he was fresh out of jail for domestic violence and gun charges, but was trying to turn his life around. He said he wanted to share information he heard from a friend about Nick being involved in Sarah’s death.

The way Jay told the story, this friend told him one night he was hanging out with Nick.

Jay: So they were sitting around a little fire pit in the backyard. And they said something about hitting somebody while they were drunk driving and they were not really talking to him too much. And so then he got kind of scared, I guess, and he didn’t talk about it for a while. But I’m pretty sure that they confessed that they had hit her or they had done something of the nature of, ‘Oh, I think potentially could have killed somebody.’

Sottile: So, second-hand information, which is better than fourth-hand information. Jay said he’d been afraid to give this information because he has a past with Nick and thinks he’s dangerous.

It seemed like possibly good information. We couldn’t talk to Jay’s friend because he died. So, we decided that we had to go find Nick ourselves. One day when we were out in Rainier, we started poking around the trailer park where we thought he lived.

Sottile: This is… No number.Where the fuck is 8?

Haas: 8 must be way down in the end, these are counting down.

Sottile: 13, 14… It’s like the one that we can’t find is 8.

Haas: 19. We’re going the wrong direction now.

Sottile: We finally figured out which one was Nick’s, but when we knocked, no one answered. We tried next door.

Haas: Hey there, sorry to bother you. Is this #8?

Unidentified Woman: No this is #9. I want to say #8 is that one?

Haas: Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Sottile: She didn’t know Nick. but she did know the woman who, according to the police tip. talked about being in the car with Nick that night. Small towns, man. She gave us her info.

Turns out the woman in the car with Nick is the mother of some of his kids. They broke up a while ago. She told Ryan that they were still together in March 2019. Sometimes, they stayed a half hour away in Washington state, and they didn’t have a car.

We poked around a little more, but this hit and run theory was starting to fray.

Nick’s in prison. That’s why we couldn’t find him that day at the trailer park. He was convicted for beating up his kid. We mailed him a letter as a last ditch effort to get in touch.

There’s no doubt that he is a terrible driver, and a violent person. But, a fourth-hand phone call, a second-hand conversation, a home surveillance camera showing headlights. I don’t know. None of it was really getting us there.

I have to just say, Ryan and I have done a lot of investigative work together over the years. We’ve revealed far-right influences on a Nevada bombing, uncovered the underlying racism that put a man on death row, but we’ve never filed the sheer volume of public records requests on any project like we did on this one. We filed requests across Columbia County asking for every record we could find on Nick, and on people who hung out with Nick.

One day, unexpectedly, all that requesting paid off with some new information. A request we made to St. Helens police turned up a police report that connected Nick to Sarah’s death. It was dated Dec. 27, 2024. It detailed a meeting between two St. Helens police officers and a paid, confidential police informant. The informant told the St. Helens officers that he had information about Sarah Zuber’s death.

He said one night, he’d been hanging out at a shady motel with two other people when the Sarah Zuber case came up. And those two people said Nick had directly told them that he – quote – “Fucked up, and knew he hit something that night.” Later, he said, he realized he hit Sarah.

It was similar to the story Jay told us. But it was also weird. This was a new report in a case that had otherwise gone stale, and it seemed like a mistake that we got it. The only way to know was to ask the investigators. We called Columbia County sheriff’s Det. Dave Peabody and asked if we could have a chat.

When you sit down to interview Det. Peabody, sometimes you gotta let him warm up a little.

Det. Dave Peabody: You’re not recording this, are you?

Haas: Well, I can..

Sottile: He doesn’t have a lot of experience with the press.

Haas: I am recording now. I was getting my levels here. We’re good to go?

Peabody: Don’t record yet.

Haas: OK. All right. Can we start the interview?

Peabody: In just a sec.

Sottile: And I think he liked giving us a bit of a hard time.

Peabody: To be honest, you’re not recording me.

Haas: Can I record?

Peabody: Not yet.

Haas: Can we record the parts about you?

Sottile: But when we sat down this time, he seemed like he was ready to open up, finally.

Peabody: So kick it off, man.

Haas: Let’s get down to business.

Sottile: We wasted no time once we started talking. We wanted to know about Nick, but we were being careful how we backed into this question. He didn’t know we had this report.

Sottile: Last time we spoke to you, you had said you had just gotten new information, because I think we talked in maybe…

Haas: December.

Sottile: No, I think we talked in January, February, maybe.

Peabody: I do remember that comment.

Sottile: Did that turn into anything?

Peabody: Not yet.

Sottile: OK.

Peabody: We’ve put forth some effort on that, actually put money out on that, and that has not come to fruition yet.

Sottile: He was talking about Nick here, and paying an informant. And it was at this point we decided to stop hiding what we knew.

Peabody: When you’re working with members of the community, whether they be on the good side of the law or the bad, but we don’t care where we get our facts, as long as they’re good facts. I mean, if you get a lead, you follow that lead. But it can be harder sometimes when you’re dealing, say, with informants. That can be harder.

Sottile: So I think I know what we’re talking about. We got a record from the St. Helens police that they, I want to say in late December, detective or… I don’t know if he’s a detective.

Haas: Dylan Gaston.

Sottile: Officer Gaston and a couple people met with two informants about [redacted]. Is this what we’re talking about, or? I didn’t actually bring that report, but we could pull it up on…

Peabody: These are the kind of things that hurt an investigation.

Sottile: The report was the best lead the police had, as far as we could tell.

Haas: Are we good reporters?

Peabody: Yeah, you’re good reporters. You’re digging stuff up. But the problem would be that, once the case goes from inactive to active, we shouldn’t be releasing any facts. We shouldn’t be releasing any reports. That report should not be released. And if it was released, it should come here and be released.

Sottile: But the more we thought about this report, the weirder it seemed.

The lead detective, Dave Peabody, is with the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office. It’s his case.

But this report came from the St. Helens Police Department, and one of the two St. Helens officers in the report is named Dylan Gaston. He’s married to one of the leaders of the Justice for Sarah Zuber group, the very same group pushing this theory that Nick is at fault for Sarah’s death.

Sottile: Do you find it odd, though, that he didn’t record that interview? And also that his wife is a part of the Justice for Sarah Zuber group who is very much pushing that [redacted] is the guy?

Peabody: I try to keep that completely separate and out of my mind. Yes. I don’t know Gaston’s wife. I know Dylan. I’ve worked with him on cases. He’s… I think Dylan is very good, OK? I don’t know his wife. I couldn’t tell you where he lives. Never done anything off the job. But as an officer, he’s done well, and I’ve had good outcomes with him and I enjoy working with him.

Sottile: We asked Peabody why an officer unaffiliated with the case, but with a lot of personal investment in solving it, didn’t record the interview with this informant. Peabody didn’t know why and was mostly concerned with the information about the informant getting out.

Peabody: I am beyond disappointed. I can’t even convey how disappointed I am that that was released to you guys. Glad you guys know how to do your job. But again, what does that do for the outcome of this?

Sottile: Well, maybe it allows us to talk a little bit more candidly about how viable of a suspect you think [redacted] is.

Peabody: At this point, I am not going to go either way on that. I mean, and not because holding back on you. It’s just I can’t tell you he’s a focus of anything at this point in time. Is he on the radar? Is he a person of interest? I suppose you could say that, but do I have enough to push me over the edge to say he did it? No. Has the informant followed through? Have we reached out? Yes. Have we had contact? Absolutely. Have we actually put money out? Yes.

Sottile: This report is still second-hand information, but it shows there really is an active investigation happening. And yet, it doesn’t make a ton of sense at this point, six years after Sarah died. Because when you look at Sarah’s autopsy, there’s nothing that screams hit-and-run.

We went back to the autopsy to take another look. Maybe we were missing something? Peabody was only going to tell us so much about their reasons for looking at Nick. We decided to dig further into the medical examiner’s findings and understand if a hit-and-run was even possible.

The day after Sarah Zuber died, Dr. Rebecca Millius conducted an autopsy. As a re-cap, Millius found a couple of hairline fractures in Sarah’s neck, a high blood alcohol content, and some scrapes and bruises on her body.

Initially, she would conclude that Sarah’s cause of death was undetermined.

Just before 8:00 p.m. that night of the autopsy, she wrote an email to Det. Peabody. This is a voice actor reading these emails, by the way.

Millus email (read by voice actor): Dave, I’ve looked at her photos and neck films again, and I just can’t fathom how, if she were struck by a car and ended up in the ditch, she can have no other blunt force trauma. Those faint purple contusions on her hip and the minor abrasions just don’t get me there, and she doesn’t have enough soft tissue hemorrhage for the neck fracture to have preceded death long enough for her to have brain edema.

Sottile: Millius told Peabody she’d had other doctors look at her findings, and…

Millus email (read by voice actor): We all keep coming back to a possible overdose and subsequently body dumped into the ditch. It’s weird, and concerning.

Sottile: Lab tests would come back negative for drugs. Peabody shared photos of Sarah on the side of the road, and Millius wrote back the next day doubling down on this idea of a body dump.

Millus email (read by voice actor): That looks less to me like a landing after being struck by a car than a dump, but I suppose stranger things have happened.

Sottile: On that first full day of the investigation, the medical examiner thought Sarah’s body could have been dumped, which could be one way to explain why none of those people who drove by saw her on the side of the road. Maybe she wasn’t there all night.

When Dr. Millius wrote that Sarah’s cause of death was undetermined, she noted that she would change the cause of death if the police gave her any “clarifying information.” And she did, 10 months later. She said Sarah died from alcohol and hypothermia.

We wanted to understand what clarifying information she received to change her mind. But the problem was Dr. Millius wouldn’t sit down for an interview. Through a spokesperson, she said she might consider a written interview. Frustrating, but we’d take what we could get. We sent over 16 questions and hoped we’d hear back.

In the meantime, we got another medical examiner to review the reports on Sarah.

Dr. Terri Haddix is a board-certified forensic and neuropathologist who’s been performing autopsies and testifying in court about her work since the 1990s. She reviewed Sarah’s autopsy, photos from that autopsy, police reports and photos from the scene.

In many ways, Dr. Haddix found herself in agreement with Dr Millius’ findings.

Dr. Terri Haddix: There are no broken bones, there’s no leg fractures, there’s no rib fractures. To me, I don’t see any stigmata externally or internally that speaks to a car-pedestrian fatality.

Sottile: She also agreed that there was nothing about the autopsy to support that Sarah was hit by a car.

Sottile: There was a reference to these kind of small, I believe teal-colored flakes that were tested and tried to figure out what that was and stuff. And I understand what you’re saying that it does sound like the cause of death is the alcohol and hypothermia, but what are the circumstances leading up to that? I just wonder if maybe it’s possible that her body was dumped.

Haddix: I mean it’s possible, but is it provable? I mean, and the stuff that they’re identifying on her clothing, the other things you would want to know is other environments in which she’d been in.

Sottile: But pretty quickly into our conversation with Dr. Haddix, she said…

Haddix: There are some things within the autopsy report that I have a little bit of a concern about.

Sottile: Haddix also wasn’t sure about the hairline fracture in Sarah’s neck.

Haddix: I have to tell you I don’t clearly see anything on the x-rays that are provided there. And if the call is being made based upon, if it’s the overall x-rays, the ones where it just shows the head and shows the torso, things like that, I certainly don’t see anything there.

Sottile: These x-rays didn’t really show a clear fracture in Sarah’s neck. It wasn’t adding up.

Haas: Actually, let’s stay on head and neck injury. So, you talked briefly about this contusion on Sarah’s head.

Haddix: I do have one question, and because this is on the right side and she’s found on her left side.

Haas: That’s exactly what I was going to ask.

Haddix: Yeah. Did her sister move her by any chance?

Haas: No.

Haddix: Did she roll her, or just find her as…

Sottile: In police reports, we could see that both Kati and the neighbor told the police they couldn’t move Sarah. Her body was too stiff.

Dr. Haddix was asking about this because Sarah had a small contusion on the right side of her head. But Sarah was found lying on her left side, not her right. So it was another injury that was kind of a question mark.

Haddix: Obviously, without her being moved in some fashion by someone, that potentially raises the possibility, did someone go up and try to move her body after she collapsed or something like that?

Sottile: So, just to recap, Dr. Haddix didn’t think her neck was fractured based on the x-rays we provided to her. And she had questions around why Sarah had an injury on the right side of her head, but was found lying on her left side.

We talked to Dr. Haddix for a long time. She said, whatever happened to Sarah just isn’t very clear, and that’s evidenced by the first autopsy which listed Sarah’s cause of death as undetermined.

Haas: Would a pathologist ever leave the cause of death, cause or manner, as undetermined? If you’re just like, hey, ‘I don’t know if there’s enough evidence here to say one way or the other.’ I would like to hear you speak on that.

Haddix: The short answer is absolutely yes. There are circumstances where, despite best efforts, they may be able to identify somebody who, what happened to an individual, or at least where that individual might have been known hours prior to their death, but they can’t really narrow down anything that actually happens in the immediate proximity of the death.

The thing about saying something’s undetermined means that, at a later point in time, if more information is brought forward, you can then factor that in and then say, “OK.” There are a number of people who will use, they’ll say the cause of death is undetermined, but the manner of death is homicide. And when you say something like that, you think, well, wait a minute, you don’t know how they died. How do you know it’s a homicide?

Well, you then have to take into consideration circumstances. And so that’s more frequently what needs greater investigation are the circumstances or the scene or examination of physical evidence to be able to say with certainty, ‘Look, despite this effort, we can’t identify anything else that appears to have had a role in the death. And nothing that raises flags like a-ha.’

So yes, undetermined, undetermined is a very reasonable thing.Now, some people think that that’s a… You shouldn’t have a lot of those, let meput it that way. If you’re falling back on undetermined, undetermined, then that means you’re not really working hard enough to try to flesh out all possibilities.

Sottile: Dr. Millius wrote in Sarah’s first autopsy that if “clarifying information” was given to her, she could amend the autopsy to reflect a different cause of death. It was one of our biggest questions, and it turns out it was for Haddix, too.

Haddix: I’m not clear what happened between October and January. Have you spoken to the pathologist or is she willing to talk to you?

Haas: Not yet. I hope so. I hope she will.

Sottile: It took about a month, but we finally heard back from Dr. Millius. She provided long written responses to our questions.

We asked Dr. Millius about her communications with Rebecca Zuber in the early days of the investigation. And, again, this is a voice actor reading these answers.

Millus email (read by voice actor): I did speak with Rebecca Zuber. She was expectedly distraught and looking for an explanation. I answered questions about findings at autopsy and provided what little information I had at the time. I had been told that Sarah was the victim of a hit-and-run accident and was listening for any more information regarding that or other scenarios to explain how a healthy, young lady without significant injury, who reportedly did not drink or do drugs, had died.

Sottile: Millius explained that there was early confusion between what she was being told and what the autopsy findings told her about what happened to Sarah.

Millus email (read by voice actor): In the Zuber case, much of what was initially reported turned out to be incorrect. First, as mentioned above, I was told it was a hit-and-run. I was also told that Sarah did not use alcohol or drugs. Given that context, I expected to find injury consistent with having been hit by a motor vehicle and of significant degree to have caused her death. I found no trauma at autopsy sufficient to have caused death. Nothing even close.

Sottile: Millius underlined those last three words: nothing even close. She is certain that Sarah was not hit by a car.

And from here on out, what Dr. Millius told us were bombshells. So, hang on.

We asked her about why her first autopsy read that the minor blunt force injuries found on postmortem examination are “of degree sufficient to have caused death.” Later, we noticed when she changed Sarah’s autopsy, that was changed to say her injuries were “not of a degree sufficient to have caused death.” So, which was it? Were they or weren’t they?

Millius explained:

Millus email (read by voice actor): That was a typographical error.

Sottile: A typo.

Millius said she corrected the typo on the amended autopsy report. But that didn’t happen until 10 months later. For nearly a year, plenty of people drew conclusions from that typo which made it seem like Sarah had injuries that could have killed her.

But that’s not the worst of it.

Then we asked about the neck fractures. Dr. Haddix had said she wasn’t clear they were there. And to our question, Dr. Millius said:

Millus email (read by voice actor): I am 100% certain that the fractures do not exist.

Sottile: The neck fracture? She says it is not real. Never was real. So, while Millius corrected her typo to say Sarah’s injuries were not a contributing factor to her death, she did not remove the mention of this neck fracture. Sarah Zuber’s official autopsy still says she had a fractured neck.

Millius explained that her office used an old x-ray machine at the time, and she did other x-rays to confirm Sarah’s neck wasn’t broken.

Millus email (read by voice actor): I am a parent, and my heart breaks every time a child comes under my care here. I’m sure I can’t come close to imagining the level of grief and anguish that Sarah’s death has brought to her family. I have and still do hold them close in my heart and in my prayers. And again, I am truly sorry for any additional pain caused by the errors in my report.

Sottile: Sarah Zuber did not have a fractured neck. And her injuries were not severe enough to kill her.

Six years later, the medical examiner is telling us she never believed Sarah’s neck was fractured, despite two reports saying it likely was.

These reports influence how people think about this case. Jennifer Massey. The police. But especially the Zubers. No one had ever told them any of these details. So one day we met them at their home. We told them how Dr. Millius apologized for the many errors in her report.

Sottile: So, Dr. Millius did offer an apology to you for a typo that she made in her original report …

Randy Zuber: You mean the most important typo in world history?

Sottile: …that said that Sarah’s injuries were sufficient to have caused her to die.That was changed in the second autopsy.

Randy Zuber: That would get your stuff thrown out of court right there.

Sottile: Our question is, what do you make of her offering that apology now, but not communicating with it, communicating it to you then?

Rebecca Zuber: I think it’s a lie. She knows it’s not a typo. So, I forgive people and I’ve moved forward, but I think that’s a lie. And she knows it was not a typo.

Sottile: Rebecca Zuber also said she didn’t think Dr. Millius was being honest about how she speculated on the cause of Sarah’s death in those early days. Millius would call Rebecca and ask questions. But now, Millius said that it was Rebecca who was doing all the speculating, not her.

Haas: Was your impression of these conversations that you were putting ideas out or that she was also putting ideas out? I guess, because I think now she’s trying to say things like, “Oh no, Rebecca was telling me all this stuff and I was just listening.”

Rebecca Zuber: No, she was asking questions and putting ideas out. For instance, the head injury. I mean, we were both communicating together trying to find answers because I had no idea.

Randy Zuber: Questions and answers and back and forth trying to figure things out.

Rebecca Zuber: Yeah, I had no idea.

Sottile: It wasn’t the only part of Millius’ report that Rebecca disputed. I read her answer aloud to the Zubers.

Sottile: Dr. Millius said, “In regard to the first part of your question, yes, I did speak with Rebecca Zuber. She was expectedly, distraught and looking for an explanation. I recall she shared a theory that Sarah was choked out by a friend. She said Sarah and her friends would play a game where they’d place a forearm around another person’s neck and apply pressure to induce loss of consciousness. This was new information and I could not definitively rule that out as a potential cause of death. That type of hold can cause death without evidence of injury. I did relay that theory to the detective in Columbia County.”

Randy Zuber: No, that’s not true.

Rebecca Zuber: That’s not true.

Sottile: And then we explained how Millius said she never believed there was a neck fracture.

Sottile: She said she is now 100% certain that Sarah did not have a neck fracture and that she never had a neck fracture.

Randy Zuber: What are those based on, just her beliefs or scientific studies?

Sottile: I mean, my question is, was this ever communicated to you?

Rebecca Zuber: That she did not have a neck fracture?

Sottile: There is no neck fracture.

Randy Zuber: No. No. It’s like the very first day when we were in the sheriff’s office, the very next, right away they go, “Your daughter died of a broken neck.”

Rebecca Zuber: I heard that… We were told that there was two neck fractures, and she had said, “No, it’s more like one. I only think that there’s one.” So I can’t remember her ever saying there’s no neck fracture.

Sottile: As we read more of Dr. Millius’ answers to the Zubers, Rebecca took notes on a yellow legal pad. She returned to what Millius said about Sarah being choked and pointed out another reason she didn’t believe the responses.

Rebecca Zuber: I never said that. I know exactly, because I hear that stuff that they do that choking game. Yeah, I’ve heard about that.

Haas: I’ve heard that, too.

Rebecca Zuber: And I had never heard of that before a few years ago, I heard about it. And that makes no sense because they did that autopsy right away. If anybody had a discussion of the choking game wouldn’t that have been later on?

Sottile: That’s a great point. They did the autopsy the next day.

Rebecca Zuber: Yeah.

Haas: Yeah, she probably had not even spoken to you yet at that point.

Rebecca Zuber: No, I mean, so obviously there’s huge lies in here. Or, I guess I shouldn’t say that. Maybe she is, you know, when you have missing pieces of a story, you kind of just fill in the blanks, and maybe that’s what she’s doing.

Sottile: It’s hard to understand how a report could say for six years that a person’s neck was likely fractured and then a doctor can just say, “Nope, not true.”

Det. Dave Peabody was in the room for Sarah’s autopsy. He was told about the neck fracture when he was in that room with Sarah’s body.

We, of course, went back to Dr. Millius with more questions, but a spokesperson for the Oregon State Medical Examiner’s office took over for her. Said Dr. Millius was too busy to answer any more follow up questions about Sarah Zuber.

We had asked if the Zubers were ever told the neck fracture didn’t exist, if there was an autopsy report that was updated to say it didn’t exist, and what clarifying information Millius received in the first place to change her report. They didn’t answer any of it.

We started to wonder what was really going on here. The medical examiner was telling a story about the mistakes in her report that tried to fill in the missing pieces, as Rebecca Zuber put it.

But those stories didn’t add up. The same was true when we looked at this story of Nick as a driver in a hit and run. Jennifer Massey pointed to Nick as the culprit. In our first interview, she told us she just wanted the facts.

Massey: I don’t want hearsay. I want evidence. And whatever they redact, that just tells me that they’re redacting something for a reason and that we need to dig harder.

Sottile: But the facts that supported her theory Nick was involved relied on hearsay. She made a promise that transparency would solve the Zuber case and put a stop to all this speculation. And while our own reporting had brought new transparency to this case, it still didn’t bring any concrete answers. We could see the mistakes that happened. But it didn’t tell us what happened to Sarah.

What we didn’t know when we first sat down with Jennifer Massey is that soon she’d have more power than even the police to get those answers to the Zubers. Because soon, she’d be mayor.

Judge Clark: I, Jennifer Massey.

Massey: I, Jennifer Massey.

Clark: Do solemnly swear.

Massey: Do solemnly swear.

Clark: That I will support the constitution.

Massey: That I will support the constitution.

Sottile: That’s next time.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/11/12/hush-podcast-season-2-episode-6/